Office Hours: Formerly the Director of Product at Geocaching HQ, I’m now a Product Operations consultant. I’m Allison Kelsey. AMA!Featured

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Hi Elphas!

I’m Allison Kelsey. Up until recently, I was the Director of Product at Geocaching HQ, where my focus was on driving Product-led growth, establishing a Product Operations framework, and cross-functional collaboration and leadership. I built and led a team of Product Managers, Product Designers, Technical Program Managers and Scrum Masters, and mentored people from across the organization to increase data literacy, focus on outcomes, and coach them on how to break into Product roles.

I established a Product Operating Model (POM) that starts with customers and their needs, and shifted the focus from delivering outputs to delivering outcomes. By building strong ties between Product, Marketing, and Ops teams, we pulled together to achieve company strategic objectives and reverse declining engagement and revenue by double-digits on a 25-year old product.

My abiding passion is supporting people to develop to their full potential, and building diverse teams where there is psychological safety and strong sense of belonging. By empowering individuals and aligning on strategic goals, teams can accomplish great things.

Now I’m exploring providing Product Operations consulting services to small and medium-size enterprises, as well as refining some concepts in the neurodiversity solutions space.

I’m the classic jill-of-all-trades, as my career weaved its way through the product delivery stages from tech support and QA, to customer research. I have worked in a variety of business models, and led product teams in markets ranging from Music websites, to Casual Mobile games, Fleet Telematics, and location-based apps and services. I got my start in customer and technical support, spent a number of years as an SDET and Technical Program Manager, and ultimately found my career passion - product management and people leadership.

During my downtime, I enjoy kayaking, reading, going to shows, walking my dogs, and keeping up on the latest great streaming content.

Ask me anything about how to break into Product Management, what to expect as a PM, essential ingredients to your success as a PM, how to become more comfortable with data in whatever role you are in, what the heck is Product Operations, or how to find a coach or mentor to support your development!

ElphaStaff·Aug 26

Thanks so much for joining us @AMKelsey!Elphas – please ask @AMKelsey your questions before Friday, August 30th. @AMKelsey may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites 🔥👍🏾➕

AMKelsey·Aug 30

Thanks for giving me the chance to connect with folks. I was not able to answer every question, but if the poster DM's me I'd be happy to have a conversation.Allison

Lidia47·Aug 29

Hi @AMKelsey, I'm a scrum master who has worked on digital transformations in highly regulated industries. Where can find product-led companies that have Technical Program Managers and Scrum Masters on product teams? What steps could I take to introduce myself and land a position in the future?

Ila85·Aug 29

Hello! What do you recommend for becoming more comfortable with data in any role you are in? Thank you!

AMKelsey·Aug 30

Hi @Ila85 This is one of my favorite questions! IMO, in 2024 analytical skills and facility with quantitative data is relevant to everyone no matter what their role. That said, it can be intimidating when you get started. Building confidence can be tough if you go it completely alone, or if you are in an environment where there are a lot of assumptions at play, or where there isn’t transparency about business data. I’m not sure what your role is or if you’ve already been working with data but would like to feel more comfortable with your skills and ability to interpret data and use it in decision-making. So I’ll respond using some basic assumptions. I’ll assume you are in a workspace where there is some level of data already circulating and it is seen as valuable in decision-making. I’ll assume that gaining proficiency could help you in your current role, or in a role you’d like to get, such as supporting faster or more effective decision-making, presenting results, or getting approval for projects and initiatives. Being able to interpret existing data free of assumptions and bias is one of the most important aspects of effective use of data in any role. Starting with quantitative reports and dashboards that you have access to, build your ability to interpret the data. What do you notice happening over time? If you see, for example, that at some point in time we had a significant change in the amount of time our customers spent in our app, or the amount they spent on our products, form theories about what drove that change. Think small - a bug? The Olympics? - and big - recession? New competitor? Challenge yourself to come up with as many plausible explanations for what you see in the quant. It will be really helpful to connect with someone supportive - a peer or a friend - who can help you build skills and confidence in a psychologically safe space. Have an informal coffee session with someone who may be more conversant in the data than you are. Be open to someone pointing out things you might have missed or flaws in your logic.Another critical foundation skill is to build understanding about cause and effect, and correlation vs causation. If you are in a role where you need to meet some key result, you will want to be able to form theories about cause and effect that you can test by forming hypotheses. A hypothesis is “By making for we will see in period of time. Finally, try and find a mentor in or outside the company who can help you build your skills and gain confidence. Hope this helps - happy to continue the conversation!

Moriah172·Aug 27

Hi Allison! Thank you sm for offering your time! Could you talk more about the process of successfully reversing declining engagement and revenue at Geocaching HQ? What were the key strategies? Also didn't know that Geocaching was 25 years old already!

AMKelsey·Aug 30

Hi @moriah172 Thanks for this question! I need to hold back on some of the details for confidentiality sake, but I'm happy to share the strategy around this.It’s remarkable how relevant Geocaching continues to be for the worldwide community. It’s got such a great hook - hide and seek, treasure hunt, the outdoors - it taps into something essential about being human.The process all started with quantitative user data. I formed the strategy after looking at the quant data that reflected the player’s journey. It was clear that there were some points early in the journey where we could drive good outcomes if we could reduce dropoff or increase engagement. It makes sense to start close to the top of your given funnel - because minor improvements there have big downstream effects. Getting the eventual results required that we do a good amount of process and infrastructure work: get alignment on a source of truth for data, gather qualitative data to add to the analysis, perform teardowns within the product to see if anything in the UX jumped out at these inflection points, create an experimentation framework. We also had to create and expand the Product team’s mindset that we want to focus on outcomes not just outputs. We had to build a mindset across the org that we are going to test our way into growth, rather than build our way by pumping out features. Over time we got really good at forming hypotheses as our metrics changed, quickly forming data-backed theories and testable hypotheses, and executing multiple experiments at once. At first we had more “failures” than wins, but over time the wins kept piling up and grew more bold. Over time, our hypotheses became more and more accurate so our win rate increased.Hope this answers your question!Allison

cassielowell·Aug 29

Hi @AMKelsey! Really curious for your thoughts on building community around something that's "in person" but fairly asynchronous -- eg the fact that a Geocache will exist and many people will pass through that same spot and interact with it over time, but not necessarily interact with each other in the process. Eg: I've done my fair share of puzzle hunts & AR games, but either played solo, or mostly with friends I already knew. How do you encourage people to interact and communicate with each other, and find others who enjoy these sorts of activities, when there impetus of the activity doesn't inherently require socialization?

AMKelsey·Aug 30

@cassielowell Wow, what a great, nuanced and complex question. I appreciate how you framed the question.I think a lot of us are still working out how to re/connect with people we don’t already know, to interact within a shared activity that we have in common. In geocaching that was part of our jobs as PMs, to figure out how to support connections. We had to use the product and our platform to publicize opportunities to connect with others, and to create social karma, if you will, for those types of activities. In the geocaching space we had an “event” type of geocache, where someone could host an event in person for anyone in the community to attend. In that context, folks drew on the strong sense of connection within the international community to make connections with new people, to go out caching, and then perhaps form broader friendships. I’ve seen a lot of folks using local subreddit communities, such as r/Seattle, to put out invitations to get together. In Seattle, which is (perhaps unfairly) known for its Seattle Freeze, these posts get a huge response. That tells me there are a lot of us asking your question.Would love to hear more about what you come up with!Best,Allison

carlyjaquier·Aug 27

Hi @AMKelsey - do you have any advice on how to break into product operations? I'm a seasoned product manager looking to get into this field, but I don't see many open positions

AMKelsey·Aug 30

Hi @carlyjaquier, Great question! I agree - I am not seeing many postings that specifically refer to Product Ops, and Product Operations Models (POMs) are part of an emerging conversation. So the exciting part of that is if you begin to focus on skills that you have that relate to aspects of Product Ops, you will be positioning yourself to gain early entry into this emerging field as it gains momentum.My take is that Product Ops is something that a lot of us are doing within our teams and trying to influence our broader organizations to do more effectively, but Product Ops isn’t yet an established discipline within Product. I think that will change over time, and we will see more focus on Product Ops over the next few years.So I think it makes sense to build skills and accomplishments that align well with what you’ll be doing in a Product Ops role and then seek an onramp into a Product Ops role as the field grows. Alternatively, if you are in an org that is ready to mature its processes and shows signs of being ready to develop a POM that can support growth and efficiencies, then you might be able to carve out a role at your current company then parlay that into mobility.My #1 recommendation - and this will come up again in my answer to a different question - is to hone your analytical skills, ensure you are incorporating qual and quant data in decision-making, and focus on outcomes over outputs. Keep track of your results, get them on your resume, focus on roles that require those skills even if not called “Product Operations”. Other capabilities you can develop - if you spot inefficiencies in how Product operates or how cross-team operate, and can drive measurable improvements, that is a great step forward into Ops. For example, if you can streamline PM team workflows and enable product managers to focus more on strategy and customer needs that is a huge piece of what Product Ops is all about.Hope this helps! Happy to keep the discussion going and get into more detail after this AMA.Allison

carlyjaquier·Aug 31

Thank you for answering @AMKelsey! I have a few specific questions related to my situation, do you mind if I DM you?

AMKelsey·Sep 01

Happy to talk with you more!

AMKelsey·Aug 28

Hi everyone, thanks for your excellent questions!

Elaine49·Aug 26

Hi @AMKelsey. My background is in CPG brand management. I’ve been applying to Product Management roles recently but I haven’t received any interviews. What suggestions would you have for making brand management skills more translatable to product management? Additionally, I’ve found it to be very challenging to find a career coach that has a track record of proven results with clients. How would you recommend I approach this search? Thanks for your time.

sylviabuchanan·Aug 27

Hi Allison's my name is Sylvia, I have been working in technical training for a number of years and am now interested in pivoting towards AI consultancy. I have taken a number of courses, but am not sure how to break into this field. Perhaps you could give me a few tips or ideas for building a consultation service for small to medium businesses.

AMKelsey·Aug 30

Hi @sylviabuchanan - great question; there is a lot of potential for AI application to your area of expertise.I am reading two angles to your question, hope this is on point. The transition from learning AI to application in your field, and from application to consultancy. I will assume that the courses you mention are AI courses, not courses on learning to become a consultant. You can address the first dimension if you can show how you have applied AI to your problem space, and achieved results. With your subject matter expertise in technical training, you will have intimate awareness of the goals, the end to end process, the pain points and bottlenecks. If you can identify places in the process that you can improve with AI, reducing time to create materials, or improving training outcomes, then you can build the type of real-world results that you will build your consulting on.As to making the leap to consultancy, I have found that networking had played a bit role in my branching into consultancy. My professional network had a very different topography that I had to reconfigure. I have done a lot of outreach, to strengthen my connections with folks I know who have done consulting, even in a completely different field like cybersecurity, and to form new relationships. Another way to build connections is to establish a public persona of expertise in AI and technical training. I’m in the process of organizing this for myself right now. Whatever professional platforms and spaces you are in, craft a profile and build a portfolio that reflects where you want to be, and back it with writing, videos, or case studies that establish your credentials. Hope this helps!Allison

sylviabuchanan·Aug 31

Thank you very much for the detailed response. Your advice is much appreciated.

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